It is common practice in the art of merchandising for merchants to provide parking lots in which their patrons can conveniently park their automobiles and to provide wheeled, wire-basket type push carts, commonly referred to as shopping carts. Customers can deposit their purchases in these shopping carts while in the store and then the purchases can be transported, from the store, into the parking lot and to the customers' automobiles, for final transfer into their automobiles.
Large shopping centers which provide shopping carts for customer use can have parking lots which cover many acres of land. In such situations, customers typically move carts from the store in which they have shopped to their automobiles in the parking lot, and after they have transferred their purchased goods into their automobiles they generally simply leave the cart abandoned in the parking lot. The abandoned shopping carts in the parking lot are a nuisance, as they require the merchants to hire personnel to move about the parking lots, collect the carts and return them to the store for further use. These abandoned shopping carts also create serious traffic hazards in the parking lots, cause a disturbance in movement of vehicles throughout the lot, and are frequently damaged by customers' automobiles, and in turn cause damage to the automobiles. Moreover, such abandoned carts are subject to theft.
It has been clearly established that in places where customers have been encouraged to return carts to stores from adjacent parking facilities, and in those places where special facilities have been provided in parking areas to accommodate emptied carts, damage, theft and all other inconveniences normally associated with the provision and use of such carts has been materially and noticeably reduced.
It has also been determined that if customers are encouraged to deposit their empty carts in specially provided receivers located in parking lots great economic savings and more effective and efficient use of carts can be achieved.
Systems have been proposed for encouraging the users themselves to bring back to a storage station. One example is a system in which a voucher is issued to the customer attesting the return of the cart which includes a coupon or benefit of some sort. Various other methods have been proposed to alleviate the shopping cart abandonment problem, but none have been successfully employed. Accordingly, the only common method in use for protection from random storage of shopping carts is providing personnel for the continuous manual recovery of the carts from the lots.
A cart storage device which carts can be directed or stored is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,697, invented by Savino. This patent discloses a device, installed in parking lots or the like, consisting of upstanding rail guards within which carts can be directed or stored for recovery while being protected from damage by vehicles using the parking lot.
An apparatus for encouraging the restitution of shopping carts such as in a reception area otherwise controlled by wickets is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,428,893 invented by Gillet. This patent discloses an apparatus having vertically hinged doors and dispenses a ticket or token when the proper cart is moved therethrough. This apparatus also identifies unacceptable shopping carts, which are dissimilar to those for which the apparatus is designed.
Mueller teaches a cart conveyer and dispensing apparatus in U.S. Pat. No. 4,518,072. This invention is directed to an enclosed conveyor for propelling a shopping cart therethrough. Shopping carts are propelled by engagement of their wheels by a continuous member that carries a cross bump or upwardly extending protrusion.
Thus, what is needed is a shopping cart retrieval system which, without interfering with traffic flow, will facilitate retrieval of shopping carts from a parking area or the like, store carts, and can dispense them when desired.